


Irkalla

by holocene (bonafake)



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Depression, Dreams, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 14:51:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19336765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonafake/pseuds/holocene
Summary: Tyler wakes up falling.or,tyler joseph owns a farm. josh dun gets involved.





	Irkalla

**Author's Note:**

> this had a nine thousand word planning document, and it turned into 2k. who came up with long-form fiction, anyways. i took a lot of inspiration from a lot of different places. please check the tags before reading. if there’s something else you’d like tagged, please let me know. i left things somewhat vague to avoid spoilers, but i’d be happy to tag anything. 
> 
> obviously, this is a work of fiction and everything is totally made up.
> 
> notes: tyler joseph/josh dun, alternate universe - farm, depression, eating disorder not otherwise specified, vomit, dreams, implied sexual content, flowers, vague animal husbandry, symbolic produce, fire.

Tyler throws grain into his chicken coop. It is organic; he buys it wholesale at ridiculous prices and feeds it to his ungrateful hens. Red-eyed chickens peck at the ground, blind to the yellow grains. 

Nicolas, his sole rooster, thrusts his head into the mud, chasing. He resurfaces with a worm and a wild look in his eyes. 

Tyler grasps the chicken wire and shakes the sides of the coop. Nico resumes hitting the mud with his face. 

 

-

 

There is an oleander bush that grows around the side of his farmhouse. Tyler planted it three years ago; he spent weeks determining whether the soil’s pH was low enough, if the corner of the house was sunny enough, if he could water it often enough. This was the first thing he planted, when he got the farm. He can recall digging into the too-firm September dirt, setting the plant into the pit, pressing the ground back around it. He can remember that all of his worry was for nothing, when the bush became flush with red in May of the year next. 

There are no other flowers planted around Tyler’s farmhouse, only his oleander bush, and when he wakes up, he can see red blooms from his bedroom window. He does not have to worry much, about how it grows. 

 

-

 

Tyler drives his shovel into the damp earth. The trench is twelve feet deep and filled with the corpses of worms and drying mud. He uses the blade of the shovel to poke at something shiny at the bottom. It is not water, not yet. Tyler has done a lot of reading, on how wells are made. The water table is about five feet below where he stands. 

He looks up as his neighbor’s truck rattles by. Josh Dun, shirtless, arms gleaming with sweat and dust, leaning out of the driver’s side, waving, hair bright in the pale morning light. “Hey, Tyler,” Josh says. 

Tyler nods. He does not wave back.

 

-

 

Three months ago, Tyler’s neighbors cut off his water supply. Since then, his plants have started to shrivel. They do not get much rain, where he lives, and even though Tyler has done a lot of reading about dry farming, his tomato plants are still dying. Their stems are grey and their leaves crackle like a wildfire in the wind. 

It has been three months, and Tyler has four barrels of rainwater left in his root cellar. There are still five feet of earth between him and the water table. 

Tyler is not paranoid, exactly. Tyler is big on self-sufficiency. 

 

-

 

He dreams again; he’s lying on the ground of the coop, Nico’s eyes red as he pecks at the seed on the ground. The chicken’s beak is sharp, mouth leaving behind indents in the muddy ground, and he feels scaly claws clutching at his arms, his clothes. He smacks at feathers, but Nico doesn’t stop. He still feels the claws against bare skin, beak against clean-shaven cheek, feathers brushing against lips. He wants to swallow ruffled lesser coverts; wants to chew on warm, prickly primaries. His mouth won’t open, though. He doesn’t open like that. 

Tyler wakes up falling. His bedsheets are damp with sweat. Gasping, he sits up and grabs for the glass of water on his nightstand. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the open door of his chicken coop, and Nico, standing stock-still as the other chickens run through the yard. 

He swears, tugs on crumpled jeans and dirt-stained Vans, and rushes outside. He can see as Nico starts to tear through the yard, running across Tyler’s dying tomato plants, eyes wild. Tyler runs. 

Nico is still running, towards the edge of Tyler’s property. Tyler is gaining: no matter how fast the rooster runs, Tyler’s legs are still five times as long. They are about five feet apart. Tyler reaches out and—

He falls. 

The trench is about thirteen feet deep, one foot deeper than it was yesterday. He lands on top of dead worms and loose, sandy loam. 

“Tyler?” he hears. He looks up. He can see pink fringe hanging above the mouth of the hole. 

Tyler squirms. He feels a kinship with the worms beneath him. “I have to—I have to get Nico,” he says.

“Who?”

“Nico. Ny chicken.”

Josh looks down at him, oddly. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Bastard must’ve run off,” Tyler says, struggling. 

“Don’t fucking go after that chicken,” Josh says. 

“Why not? It’s my chicken.”

“Your leg,” Josh says. Tyler looks down. His toes, he is pretty sure, are not supposed to face that way. 

“Oh,” Tyler says.

“Yeah, oh,” Josh mimics. “Here, let me help you up.”

 

-

 

“Look,” Josh says, holding Tyler’s leg flush against the splintered chair leg. “I really think I need to take you to the hospital.”

“No,” Tyler whines. “No, no, no, I can’t—I—don’t, please, I can’t—”

“Okay, okay,” Josh soothes, pressing the palm of his left hand into Tyler’s ribcage. “Hey, take a few breaths, buddy.”

Tyler breathes against the resistance and blinks away his tears at the shooting pain in his ankle. 

 

-

 

Tyler drifts in and out. Sometimes Josh is there; sometimes Tyler has only the whitewashed walls of the farmhouse to keep him company. The room fluctuates in temperature, from hot to cold to hot again. Tyler sweats; he takes over-the-counter pain medication; he sweats more. He dreams. 

Josh has eyes that are the same color as Tyler’s. He read somewhere that humans weren’t able to dream up new faces; that every face he saw in his dreams was an amalgamation of a face that he had seen before. Every face in his dreams has pieces of faces that he’s seen before, and Josh’s eyes are the same eyes that Tyler sees in the bathroom mirror when he shaves. 

“Tyler?” he hears. 

He blinks. Josh, hair wet, standing in front of him. “I fixed your irrigation system,” he hears. 

Tyler tries to swing his legs over the side of his bed, but is quickly impeded by the chair leg bound to him.

“Hey, hey,” Josh says. “Slow down, you’re still—”

“Broken,” Tyler says. 

Josh frowns. “Sprained,” he says, firm. 

Tyler scrubs a hand over his cheek, sandpaper rough. “Whatever,” he says. “I’m going outside.”

He pushes off of the bedframe, limbs stiff, and hobbles out of the farmhouse. 

 

-

 

His trench is filling with water. Tyler does not jump in joy, because he has a chair leg attached to his actual leg, but his body feels light even as his foot aches. He stares into the trench, muddy water slowly collecting at the bottom. The white bodies of dead worms rise to the surface. 

“Hey, hey,” Josh says, panting. “You, uh, you found your well.”

Tyler turns to Josh. “Thank you,” he says slowly.

“What? Oh, uh—no, I just wanted to—”

Tyler throws his arms around Josh. “Thank you,” he repeats as Josh pats his back. 

 

-

 

Tyler’s plants are perking up. His tomatoes have small yellow blossoms and his corn looks greener than it has in weeks. He turns his compost bins and watches his plants grow. 

Josh visits in the mornings. He brings sunset-colored, juice-stained cherries, newly cut flowers, and eggs. He hard-boils the eggs in Tyler’s kitchen. 

“Where are these from?”

“The neighbors,” Josh says, and runs them under cold water. They eat egg whites and Rainier cherries. They throw yellow-green yolks and cherry pits into Tyler’s compost bins.

 

-

 

Tyler unties the chair leg from his ankle. He turns his compost bins. He trims his oleander bush and harvests the first blush-pink heirloom tomatoes from his plants. 

Josh visits in the evenings. He brings semolina wheat pasta, room-temperature goat cheese, and condoms. He takes his shoes off, rolls a condom on, and fucks Tyler over his kitchen sink.

 

-

 

Tyler wakes up falling. He can see the oleander bush from his bedroom window. The sheets are damp and tangled around his legs. Nico, eyes bright, peers out from behind the bush. 

He swallows, swings his legs out of bed and onto the cold wood floor, and pulls his dirt-crusted jeans back on. 

 

-

 

There is an oleander bush that grows around the side of his farmhouse. Tyler planted it when the ground was firm and the pH was low; he dug the hole with his bare hands, frantic in the sunshine. He tore into his black composition notebook with dirt under his fingernails and shoved pages deep into the dark space on the side of his house and cried and placed the plant over top of pages layered with words written with black ink. This was the first thing he buried, when he got the farm. He can recall digging the hole in September dirt, setting the plant on top of his words, pressing the ground back around the torn pages. 

He tries not to worry much, about what he has buried there.

 

-

 

Tyler is standing in front of the oleander bush. Its red flowers are fragrant in the morning air, near-sickening in their sweetness. He sees the shredded pages of his composition notebook, the firm soil with a low pH. He grabs at the plant, eyes watering, hands burning. 

Tyler stuffs the leaves into his mouth. He swallows. 

 

-

 

Josh finds him, standing in front of his trench, puking, muscles spasming, eyes tearing up. His mouth is filled with red flowers and bitter herbs. Tyler retches. 

“Christ,” Josh is saying. Tyler retches again. The bottom of the trench is yellow and red and he is leaking saltwater back into the Red Sea and everything that he let go of belongs to him again. 

 

-

 

Tyler clutches the toilet bowl, his porcelain salvation. He breathes. The acid lining his throat tissue burns with the intake of cold air. Josh raps a fist against the door. “Ty,” he says. 

Tyler presses his face into the tile floor. His stubble scrapes against the dirty grey grout. Josh lets out a breath and sits against the door. Tyler spits bile into the toilet and crawls to sit next to Josh. He can feel his heat through the door. 

The walls are thin, between them. Sometimes, Tyler can even walk through them.

He opens the door. 

 

-

 

Josh has good eyes: Tyler’s eyes. He stares at the carnage of the bathroom. Tyler is in the habit of puking until he knows there is nothing left to puke. He has given the porcelain gods and their septic system altar everything necessary to sustain life. The oleander flowers are as starkly red against the brown-green leaves as they were in life. Josh stares. “Christ,” he says. He has a crumpled, leftover flower tucked behind his ear, another pinched between his thumb and index fingers.

“I ate it,” Tyler says. 

Josh says, “You won’t go to the hospital.” He sets the flower down. 

Josh says, “You’re fucking insane, you know that, right?” 

Josh says, “Brush your teeth.” 

 

-

 

Josh stays in the evening. He cleans out Tyler’s toilet bowl and brushes Tyler’s teeth and fucks Tyler as the evening light fades. They sit on Tyler’s front porch step and watch as the moths cluster around the motion-activated light. 

 

-

 

Josh visits in the mornings. He brings a fifty dollar Edible Arrangement, fresh eggs, and the newspaper. 

Tyler is not so interested in current events, but he is hungry anew. He reads the whole paper. 

 

-

 

Tyler finds an unopened pack of Number Two pencils in his attic. He uses his fingernails to peel the painted yellow wood away their cylindrical centers. He chews on the broken points, gunmetal gray crushed between his teeth, and swallows. Josh sweeps away the mangled pencil bodies, tugs wooden splinters from where they sit under his bleeding fingernails, and buys Tyler another tube of toothpaste. 

 

-

 

Tyler looks into the trench, at the red flowers shriveled with stomach acid. There is no water food for chickens in its depths, not anymore. Now, only the remnants of Tyler’s own Red Sea. 

He looks up as his neighbor’s truck rattles by. Josh, leaning out of the driver’s side, waving, hair bright in the pale morning light. “Hey, Tyler,” Josh says. 

Tyler nods. He does not wave back. 

 

-

 

Tyler turns his bone-dry compost bins. He harvests a rainbow of heirloom tomatoes. He doesn’t look for Nico around every corner. 

He pulls up his oleander bush wearing gardening gloves, and he writes in his new composition notebook, and he buys two boxes of extra-long matches. 

 

-

 

In early September, Tyler sets fire to Nicolas Bourbaki’s chicken coop. 

Nico and his brethren no longer have a home on Tyler’s farm, as far as he is concerned. 

 

-

 

“Hey,” Josh says, pounding on Tyler’s front door. “Hey, asshole.”

He opens the door. 

Josh is smeared with ash, damp with sweat, shirtless. He has a fire engine on his head. Tyler swallows the ink in his mouth. He knows his teeth are black, that his notebook is open on the kitchen table. He takes the pen casing from behind his ear. 

“You almost set fire to your neighbor’s house,” Josh says. His eyes are Tyler’s shade of brown, but different, Tyler sees. They are brighter; they are more prone to reflecting light. 

“I set fire to my chicken coop,” Tyler says. “Not Neighbor Ben’s house.”

“Fire spreads,” Josh says. 

“Not like ideas,” Tyler hums. He licks at his teeth. Josh stares. “You can come in.”

“You know,” Josh says. “I never saw any of those chickens you talked about.”

Tyler takes a step forward. “I know.”

“Ben didn’t ever cut off your water.”

“I know.” 

“You’re insane, you know that?”

Tyler swallows again and pokes at Josh’s face, smears ink along his cheekbone. Josh takes off Tyler’s shirt, pulls him flush against his body. Tyler scrabbles at Josh’s dick, at his hands, his legs. “Fuck—fuck—Tyler—” Josh says, hands sweaty, running along Tyler’s skin, ink slicking the way. Tyler gasps and—and—and—

 

-

 

Josh visits in the evenings. He doesn’t bring anything. He sits on Tyler’s kitchen counter while Tyler scribbles in his second composition notebook and sets out Tyler’s chalky white iron supplements. Tyler runs his ink-stained fingers along Josh’s jaw, and smiles, and kisses Josh, and tastes the ink on his own tongue.

 

-

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i'm relatively new to the tøp fandom, and i would just about die for some feedback. drop a comment on your way out? much love <3
> 
> some other notes:   
>  \- the title is a name for the mesopotamian underworld. it's also called arali, which is a type of oleander, and its occupants can eat only dust. in some myths, they're birdlike and covered in feathers.   
>  \- the working title: [twenty one pilots: Down On The Farm.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPE76L-RUuI)  
>  \- tyler only grows heritage tomatoes because they breed true and are also delicious.  
>  \- i was thisclose to including some existentialist pigs named søren and jean-paul. they're happily pushing a rock up a hill in my mind.   
>  \- [pro writing tip for all aspiring creators.](https://gr8writingtips.tumblr.com/post/88792829217/writing-tip-857) tyler takes it to mouth.


End file.
